She's Been Out 7 Months!!!

 

Zone Interviews

 

 

 

 

our church got CARPET!!!!!! i havent felt carpet in so long so we all sat on the floor for our district meeting with no shoes of course!!

 

 

 

 

Im sorry parker. I have to wear these ugly things to protect my legs!!!!! so ooooo ugly. sister weller made fun of me!

 

 

 

My dinner: Fresh Banana Shake on the right!

 

Our zone

 

 

 I got my first pedicure and during our district meeting I got up and showed everyone my new pedicure. Thats my district leader! haha he took a pic of it and sent it to his mom and said "this sister got up in the middle of my workshop to show us her pedicure" haha yessss love it.

 

Mother's Note: I love the pedicure picture. It's great to know that Shelby is STILL Shelby!



 



Transfer Announceme​nts

Today in our district meeting was transfer announcements.Oh but i am staying, of course. i get my new comp tomorrow. Each companion in our zone is leaving!!! SO SAD. I have loved our zone and now its going to be completely different. Two elders are training american's it will be so fun cause they will be so STUNNED like i was! ha

I made no bake cookies for our whole zone they loved them and were gone in like 3 seconds. Sis. wells & suarez made fruit cocktail too. We partied. That is why you have sister missionaries in missions, or else no one would eat!

My companion left us last night. I slept alone!!!!! SO WEIRD!!! I was scared and prayed alone and woke up alone and I hated it. The first night i get home mom you are sleeping with me! haha but she was fine. One of the senior couples assigned in our zone made us TACO SOUP!!! So we all ate the last supper, it was so fun. Sister Jensen the senior couple reminds me sooooo much of Lori Brevard. Like i just want to hug her all the time cause they are the same person.

one day we were walking to our investigator's house and asked a tric driver if he was there (everyone knows everyone and where they are so awesome) so i was just like not paying attention as my companion asked and then she looks at me and says, "he dead" haha just like that. I WAS SHOCKED. Our investigator died!!! Then we hopped on and he took us to their house where they were partying cause that is just the culture here. Come to find out he died in his sleep (they said a dream but philippino's have SO many weird supersicious beliefs it drives me crazy) but he died of a heartattack. He was 26 had 7 girlfriends, as in 7 girlfriends and one kid. He is better up there repenting i think. But hey, he listened to our message once so he will be okay i think ;) so sad.

we have this old member in our ward who is a recent convert. he is 80 years old but thinks he is 20. he is a ward mission leader and works with us EVERY day ALL day. he has a CRAZY backround and i just love the guy!! you call every old guy here Tatay so that is his name. i will send you pics of his outfits! ha he looks 12. he just recently died his hair because his gay friend told him too. i just looked at him and said, WHY? never again tay!!! but he is the best. he has no teeth and i cant understand one thing he says but whatev.

my favorite family in this branch made us american food the other day.. BLT's on bagels. so good!! i havent had a bagel since the mtc when i ate like 4 every breakfast. ha but then we had a MILLION dinner and lunch appointments cause my comp left. So i am getting FAT!

two members different times told me i am "glowing". sweet right? but i think i am. everyone tells me i look happy. i am so happy! i love my mission and this time i have. i have an amazing family, support system, friends, i am so lucky! why wouldn't i be glowing?

i am excited to hear the wonderful words of Elder Bednar on Friday! I will write all about it next week. I will email monday! love you all soooo much!!

xoxox
Sister Curtis

I COOKED!!!

Yes. I cooked. without an oven, crock pot or microwave. SUCCESS!! I cooked eggplant. who knew eggplant was a vegatable not just Kallie's wedding color. HA. it was so good. THEN I cooked a rice topping that was yummy and creamy. and i learned how to like cut vegies and stuff. WHAT THE! Thank you mission. its honestly saving my life. haha me and sis wells made no bake cookies and i kind of wanted to cry because they tasted so good!!

this week was so good. so fast. sheesh. next week is transfer day. What the. in church i just laid my head on my comp telling her don't leave me. its so sad. she is going home. but i think she is in denial. she always tells me "its far sister curtis" umm no its not sister segovs! its days away. but it doesn't make me want to come home at all. I am loving it here. the floods are still crazy i guess. who knows i am isolated in this area and have no idea whats going on. the senior couples in our branch update us on normal life. but i can't remember anything. yes mom about the new borne movie! don't worry thats what EVERYONE talks about here. its in the city of marikina. PART OF MY MISSION! they filmed it there because its suuupppeeerrr busy there. but yeah thats what my mission looks like i guess. haven't seen the movie but every philippino is so proud! ha maybe i will be assigned there. hope not. i'd rather be in province forever.

about living here. now do you realize how hard it was for me the first week? but now it just seems normal. its hard to live here but i love it so its fine. seriously, every weird thing just seems normal.

example: one day we were sitting on a jeepney going to a really far part of our area and there was so much construction. i literally saw (this is not a joke) a guy who was like 25 or so "wasting" on the sidewalk. as in going to the bathroom, but not standing up peeing. yes it was normal. people walked by and didn't even care. and its just normal. i told my zone and they all just shrugged it off. like that. that happens in the states right? hahahaha

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OWEN!!!!!!!!!  i miss and love you! i can't believe you are 2 years old!!!

this week we have zone interviews. i am excited, the pres and ap's come to our church with our zone and we all bring rice toppings and pres interviews us and then usually sister delamare works with a sister couple. i think she may work with us since my comp is going home. its fine! what else. i can't remember.

OHHHH. okay so we did a service project for this investigator. she lives in a tree. like her house is connected to a tree with wood and like nothing else. so sad. she has dirt floors and she lives in dirt. so we told her we would help her wash her clothes. by hand of course. these philippina women do all the laundry of the family. the kids don't help. thats just not the culture. if they get in trouble which is never cause their is no discipline here then that's what they do but we only did this women's children's clothing and only washed them and it took us 3 hours and their were TWO of us. my hands started hurting really bad, but i kept doing it. i just felt so good the whole time. my comp was telling me aobut her mom and how her hands would bleed but she would keep going. 5 minutes later my hands started bleeding. the tops of my fingers were red and stinging really bad. when we were done, and went home i realized how bad they were. AH! i laid in my bed that night crying cause they hurt so bad. i wore band aids on each finger for four days!! now they are a little better but i couldn't do anything sheesh with out hands. i was the chorister in relief society and everyone gasped when they saw my hands! i will show you in pictures next week! be grateful you don't have to do that!!

well i think that's it for now! i love you all. i am having such an incredible time here on my mission. i love it. just so everyone knows some missionaries in our zone just played "spoons" the card game but we played it with our name tags, and i won. thank you.
the church is true. love you all!

xo,
Sister Curtis 

Flooding All Day and All Night

sorry so late, we just got back from the temple and mall! its 6:15 pm here! uhhhhh i haven't had an all day p-day this whole transfer. thats why i am so exhausted i think through out the week. we had a zone fast yesterday lunch to today lunch. it was good to fast and be in the temple. but i got dehydrated i think so i got sick towards the end and like all shaky but its okay. then i ate and drank lots of water and i was fine. we pigged (is that a word?) out at pizza hut after. about P5,000 worth. one kid bought all our pizza? what the? no one knows why but we did not complain. i think thats like $100 plus in dollars. anyway i sent pics.

So our whole mission had floods. but don't worry not my area! most of the mission had to evacuate and did service all week. but not us! YAY! we had to pack a bag for 2 days just in case. but i didn't. ha i was like..i am not leaving! haha our zone leaders maybe texted us every minute seeing if we were okay. i bought these REALLY nice "ugliest things of my whole life boots that i cant believe i am even telling you about" for the flooding. but everyone is safe and good now. it mostly happened in the city. thank good ness i am in the boon docks and no floods!!

we had a cool experience. we were in the mountain area of our area and my comp felt like we needed to buy food for our less active who literally lives in no house. he is so unhealthy skinny and has a son and they never have food. so we bought them like P100 worth of food which is like $2 i think, anyway and went to go give it to them. his son was asleep when we got there (his house doesn't even have walls) and the dad wasn't there. so we just put the food on the little bench table thing and when we started to leave we saw the dad and he was coming back from fishing (with a wood stick-thats it) and his cage was EMPTY. we asked him if he got any and he said no. my heart sank..him and his son were not going to eat that night. AH! so then we had huge smilies on our faces and just said bye to him and hid in the bushes til he saw the food. it was like christmas day to see him go over to the bag and see all their food. i just love these people and hate how God's children live like this. everyday honestly is a day of humility & gratefulness can't think of the word in english.


i am loving my companion still. she goes home in 3 weeks. ya what its been 3 weeks of this transfer. ya what school starts soon. ya what its almost september. doesn't seem real. i feel completely out of the world. who knew olympics was going on and stuff? mom send me some worldly news, all the missionaries in my zone always go crazy when we hear home stuff it makes us still feel like normal people.


did i mention elder bednar is coming to my mission august 31? did i? well if i didn't, ELDER BEDNAR IS COMING TO SPEAK TO MY MISSION. ya so cool. i am SO excited. he has asked us to be prepared about questions and read some talks about faith i will send them to you they are kind of amazing!


thats it, have a good week everyone! bryce good job on the missionary experience at work. didn't know those existed in utah! love it. keep going.
xoxo
Sister Shelby Curtis

august? whaaaaat

hello po!

how is it going? my week was good. full of 4 scared sisters in one scary house. so lots of priesthood blessings from our zone leaders, prayers, and lots of laughs about what happened to us. i wrote every detail down in my journal and i told sister weller the cute american companion i am going to tell everyone about it at cheesecake factory one day when i get home! hahaha. it was fast sunday when i told her that. ha

i am doing really good! just got back from playing philippino games in the pouring rain with some of our zone so fun! philippino games are so fun-then you put in some american intense elders and it gets crazy cause philippino's are not competitive. ha anyway, so fun. then we all went to jollybee. so gross! oh well so fun. so i am soaking right now cold in this computer shop.

we got these senior couples in our area now and they are super young cause they want to do 5 missions so they decided to start now. so they are as young as my parents..ya i just said young. anyway, theyyy areeeee crrraaazzzzy. SO awesome!!! they work with us sometimes so one day after they worked with us they took us out to eat (free FOOD) and we saw some foreigners) they looked like action heros. they had muscles and were like over 5 feet tall and i told the senior couple, why are they so big? and then said, sister curtis you have been in the philippines looking at tiny men for too long. they are normal looking! good news for you dad..you will look so muscly when i get home ;)

mom i love the cards you send me. i open them up like grandpa opens his cards up to see if there is ever cash in it. and then i get really disappointed! haha but i still love them ;) i have gotten every letter and package i am pretty sure. yay for safe mail.

i fasted saturday lunch-sunday lunch. 24 hours. first time in my life i have ever fasted for that long i know that is bad but it was such a spiritual experience. i prayed really hard i would have strength to climb mountains literally, ha with no food or water and it totally worked. fasting was super effective for our work and we had so many less active families come to church yesterday!! we were soo happy. fasting seriously is so great. i love the constant testimonies i am getting through out my mission.


our work is going really great! i am loving this area. we have this investigator who is literally chosen by God. ha honestly. we gave her the commitment to read the plan of salvation pamphlet so we could talk about it next visit. so we asked her if she read it and what she learned or understood and she explained the whole plan for us. honestly i couldnt understand her but she just kept talking and talking and then my comp goes..Exacto and then i knew..whoa. she's right! haha but yeah she's amazing.

what else. this is super long sorry i think i will start doing mass emails every week..do people care about what i have to say anymore? i remember geting mass emails from people and i just deleted them! haha anyway! love you all soooo much. have a wonderful last couple of weeks of summer. what the! where did your summer go? fastest summer of my life. love you all!!

xoxo
grandma and grandpa write me! & bryce.

Shelby

Scary Experience

Hello,

i am emailing you all so late. but there is a reason. a couple of days ago one of my roommates had a crazy experience with satan with her less active member. we all were really scared about it and earlier after district meeting, the zone leaders and us sisters went to this house to cast out all the bad spirits. people, i did not believe in this stuff before and thought these people were crazy. i can't really talk much about it but it was honestly the craziest experience i have ever been apart of. we are all shaking and stunned still. everything is fine now, but the adversary is real. i didn't believe in it but i do now. but i believe ten times more in the power of the priesthood. if i have any advice to the men in my life it is so always be worthy. if these awesome zone leaders were not worthy we couldn't have just had a miracle. one day i will tell you all about it. i am honestly so grateful for the priesthood in my life and the true church.

anyway, so this week was great. another great week! loving my new companion, and roommates so much. i live with an american and all we do is laugh. I am remembering things that are funny in english and how funny I AM! ha ha its the best. bryce i explained to her about coach whats his name, the youtube and how we would laugh so hard all the time at those and we laughed for so long as i was explaining him and the way he kicks his leg! haha

so in a lesson i was explaining the gospel of jesus christ of course in tagalog and instead of saying, after baptism we recieve the gift of the holy ghost, i said we recieve the gift of tongues. hmmm think i have prayed for that gift like EVERY SINGLE DAY! haha so funny. they are kind of the same right?

I had a "i want to be a missionary forever experience". one night we went to our last appointment Joann and she is a member, active but her husband isn't. she always wants the missionaries over cause she loves the spirit they have, but her husband is always gone so they haven't been there for a while. so something just told us to go there. so we knock on her door and she started bawling. she said literally, 5 seconds before we knocked (well you don't knock on people's door here, you said people! really loud haha) she was so depressed and said a prayer and asked Heavenly Father if He loved her, and if He did then why don't the missionaries come? Isn't that cool. I love helping people so much!

so my new area is the most peaceful place. i thought i would be in the city my whole mission but i see like RICE FIELDS and mountains and beautiful green land all day its amazing!!

we had district conference yesterday & saturday our area is only a branch and district so anyway, pres & sis delamare came my mission president and it was so great to be with them for 2 days and here them talk! those people are so great and spiritual and even though they speak in english everyone in the room receives the gift of tongues and can understand. honestly, its so cool how fast and strong they can bring the spirit in.

yesterday i taught a lesson, and prayed so hard for the gift of tongues and i UNDERSTOOD everything!! i walked out of it and was like..WAIT! i could understand! hahaha i told my companion and she said that she could tell i understood! YES! we are moving along people-we are  making some progress!

i love all of you! sorry my life is busy and i have no time ever. sorry i am such a hardworker and all we do is work. haha sorry im so humble. our district leader sends us texts every day and tells us how amazing we are cause we are all working so hard, its a great feeling!!

love you all!!
Sister Curtis

second area

hello po!
this has to be fast.
love my new companion, she is so hard working and fun. she actually talks to me and laughs not like my old comp. she is going home in 6 weeks so then i will get a new comp AGAIN and lead the area. pray for me. i will have 5 comps in 5 transfers i told myself i wanted a new comp every transfer and its worked! my new area is boon docks. as in nothing but mud, mountains, bugs, and rain. its cold here! like i am COLD!!!! its probably like 90 but its freezing. i love it! i wake up every night shaking! our area is the farthest away from the mission home. to go to zone interviews we have to wake up at 3 and leave at 4! its only 30 miles, HA but so much traffic! crazy righttt???

our new area is just a district and branch..so small. the people are great. i am realizing every where you go the work is the same, and the people are the greatest! i love missionary work. my comp doesnt really speak english that well, and really wants to learn so we are helping each other. she is so warm and makes me feel so good! she is so happy all the time so its great!

love my roommates. yay an american! ALL we talk about is food. we just cry about how we cant go to olive garden and cheesecake factory and have to eat rice each day. i am eating a lot better. the wall with rice is comping down slowly. they cook good food!

today we are going to the mall in the big city! i hear their is a krispy kreme's so i am going to bring some home for my roommates!! hopefully eat some good food at the mall.

i absolutely love my new zone! a lot of americans and they are all my batch going home.

this week we have temple tour and our zone is hosting so we are the tour guides, my comp wanted to be the tour guide of the "celestrial marriage" part. Haha so fun! i am excited.

i can't remember really anything else, my mind is so crazy right now cause i am trying to hurry everything! i love you all so much! next week will be better!

i love my mission and these experiences i am having. i am realizing more and more of the atonement of jesus christ and how much we need it. i am so grateful for the atonement and through it we can all return to our heavenly father!

alam ko po na yung pagpapayad-sala ni jesus christ ay totoo at sa pamamagitan ng pagpapapyad-sala puwede po tayo makapagbalik sa ating ama sa langit! love you all!!
xoxo
sister curtis